If I have two things which are hex, can I someone how append their binary together to get a value?
In C++,
say I have
unsigned char t = 0xc2; // 11000010
unsigned char q = 0xa3; // 10100011
What I want is somehow,
1100001010100011, is this possible using bit-wise operators?
I want to extract the binary form of t and q and append them...
Yes it's possible.
Just use the left-bitshift operator, shifting to the left by 8, using at least a 16-bit integer. Then binary OR the 2nd value to the integer.
unsigned char t = 0xc2; // 11000010
unsigned char q = 0xa3; // 10100011
unsigned short s = (((unsigned short)t)<<8) | q; //// 11000010 10100011
Alternatively putting both values in a union containing 2 chars (careful of big endian or small) would have the same bit level result. Another option is a char[2].
Concatenating two chars:
unsigned char t = 0xc2; // 11000010
unsigned char q = 0xa3; // 10100011
int result = t; // Put into object that can hold the fully concatenated data;
result <<= 8; // Shift it left
result |= q; // Or the bottom bits into place;
Your example doesn't really work too well because the width (usually 8-bits) of the input values aren't defined. For example, why isn't your example: 0000000100000010, which would be truly appending 1 (00000001) and 2 (00000010) bit wise.
If each value does have a fixed width then it can be answered with bit shifting and ORing values
EDIT: if your "width" is defined the full width with all leading zero's removed, then it is possible to do with shifting and ORing, but more complicated.
I'd go with the char array.
unsigned short s;
char * sPtr = &s;
sPtr[0] = t; sPtr[1] = q;
This doesn't really care about endian..
I'm not sure why you'd want to do this but this would work.
The problem with the bit methods are that you're not sure what size you've got.
If you know the size.. I'd go with Brians answer
There is no append in binary/hex because you are dealing with Numbers (can you append 1 and 2 and not confuse the resulting 12 with the "real" 12?)
You could delimit them with some special symbol, but you can't just "concatenate" them.
Appending as an operation doesn't really make sense for numbers, regardless of what base they're in. Using . as the concatenation operator: in your example, 0x1 . 0x2 becomes 0x12 if you concat the hex, and 0b101 if you concat the binary. But 0x12 and 0b101 aren't the same value (in base 10, they're 18 and 5 respectively). In general, A O B (where A and B are numbers and O is an operator) should result in the same value no matter what base you're operating in.
Related
I am storing some hex values inside a char array. I would like to sum these hex values and if it is bigger than 1 byte then it should drop the larger bits.
For example I might declare
char a = 0x21;
char b = 0x07;
and so I would like to add them to get a hex value of 0x28 as it should be, which is stored as a char.
Thanks tkausl. It made me realise the answer will be in int type, and I was confused why it gave me 40.
I was looking for char(a+b).
I am dealing with very large list of booleans in C++, around 2^N items of N booleans each. Because memory is critical in such situation, i.e. an exponential growth, I would like to build a N-bits long variable to store each element.
For small N, for example 24, I am just using unsigned long int. It takes 64MB ((2^24)*32/8/1024/1024). But I need to go up to 36. The only option with build-in variable is unsigned long long int, but it takes 512GB ((2^36)*64/8/1024/1024/1024), which is a bit too much.
With a 36-bits variable, it would work for me because the size drops to 288GB ((2^36)*36/8/1024/1024/1024), which fits on a node of my supercomputer.
I tried std::bitset, but std::bitset< N > creates a element of at least 8B.
So a list of std::bitset< 1 > is much greater than a list of unsigned long int.
It is because the std::bitset just change the representation, not the container.
I also tried boost::dynamic_bitset<> from Boost, but the result is even worst (at least 32B!), for the same reason.
I know an option is to write all elements as one chain of booleans, 2473901162496 (2^36*36), then to store then in 38654705664 (2473901162496/64) unsigned long long int, which gives 288GB (38654705664*64/8/1024/1024/1024). Then to access an element is just a game of finding in which elements the 36 bits are stored (can be either one or two). But it is a lot of rewriting of the existing code (3000 lines) because mapping becomes impossible and because adding and deleting items during the execution in some functions will be surely complicated, confusing, challenging, and the result will be most likely not efficient.
How to build a N-bits variable in C++?
How about a struct with 5 chars (and perhaps some fancy operator overloading as needed to keep it compatible to the existing code)? A struct with a long and a char probably won't work because of padding / alignment...
Basically your own mini BitSet optimized for size:
struct Bitset40 {
unsigned char data[5];
bool getBit(int index) {
return (data[index / 8] & (1 << (index % 8))) != 0;
}
bool setBit(int index, bool newVal) {
if (newVal) {
data[index / 8] |= (1 << (index % 8));
} else {
data[index / 8] &= ~(1 << (index % 8));
}
}
};
Edit: As geza has also pointed out int he comments, the "trick" here is to get as close as possible to the minimum number of bytes needed (without wasting memory by triggering alignment losses, padding or pointer indirection, see http://www.catb.org/esr/structure-packing/).
Edit 2: If you feel adventurous, you could also try a bit field (and please let us know how much space it actually consumes):
struct Bitset36 {
unsigned long long data:36;
}
I'm not an expert, but this is what I would "try". Find the bytes for the smallest type your compiler supports (should be char). You can check with sizeof and you should get 1. That means 1 byte, so 8 bits.
So if you wanted a 24 bit type...you would need 3 chars. For 36 you would need 5 char array and you would have 4 bits of wasted padding on the end. This could easily be accounted for.
i.e.
char typeSize[3] = {0}; // should hold 24 bits
Now make a bit mask to access each position of typeSize.
const unsigned char one = 0b0000'0001;
const unsigned char two = 0b0000'0010;
const unsigned char three = 0b0000'0100;
const unsigned char four = 0b0000'1000;
const unsigned char five = 0b0001'0000;
const unsigned char six = 0b0010'0000;
const unsigned char seven = 0b0100'0000;
const unsigned char eight = 0b1000'0000;
Now you can use the bit-wise or to set the values to 1 where needed..
typeSize[1] |= four;
*typeSize[0] |= (four | five);
To turn off bits use the & operator..
typeSize[0] &= ~four;
typeSize[2] &= ~(four| five);
You can read the position of each bit with the & operator.
typeSize[0] & four
Bear in mind, I don't have a compiler handy to try this out so hopefully this is a useful approach to your problem.
Good luck ;-)
You can use array of unsigned long int and store and retrieve needed bit chains with bitwise operations. This approach excludes space overhead.
Simplified example for unsigned byte array B[] and 12-bit variables V (represented as ushort):
Set V[0]:
B[0] = V & 0xFF; //low byte
B[1] = B[1] & 0xF0; // clear low nibble
B[1] = B[1] | (V >> 8); //fill low nibble of the second byte with the highest nibble of V
I'm programming with a PLC and I'm reading values out of it.
It gives me the data in unsigned char. That's fine, but the values in my PLC can be over 255. And since unsigned chars can't give a value over 255 I get the wrong information.
The structure I get from the library:
struct PlcVarValue
{
unsigned long ulTimeStamp ALIGNATTRIB;
unsigned char bQuality ALIGNATTRIB;
unsigned char byData[1] ALIGNATTRIB;
};
ulTimeStamp gives the time
bQuality gives true/false (be able to read it or not)
byData[1] gives the data.
Anyways I'm trying this now: (where ppValues is an object of PlcVarValue)
unsigned char* variableValue = ppValues[0]->byData;
int iVariableValue = *variableValue;
This works fine... untill ppValues[0]->byData is > 255;
When I try the following when the number is for example 257:
unsigned char testValue = ppValues[0]->byData[0];
unsigned char testValue2 = ppValues[0]->byData[1];
the output is testvalue = 1 and testvalue2 = 1
that doesn't make sense to me.
So my question is, how can I get this solved so it gives me the correct number?
That actually looks like a variable-sized structure, where having an array of size 1 at the end being a common way to have it. See e.g. this tutorial about it.
In this case, both bytes being 1 for the value 257 is the correct values. Think of the two bytes as a 16-bit value, and combine the bits. One byte will become the hight byte, where 1 corresponds to 256, and then add the low bytes which is 1 and you have 256 + 1 which of course is equal to 257. Simple binary arithmetic.
Which byte is the high, and which is the low we can't say, but it's easy to check if you can force a message that contains the value 258 instead, as then one byte will still be 1 but the other will be 2.
How to combine it into a single unsigned 16-bit value is also easy if you know the bitwise shift and or operators:
uint8_t high_byte = ...
uint8_t low_byte = ...
uint16_t word = high_byte << 8 | low_byte;
I have the question of the title, but If not, how could I get away with using only 4 bits to represent an integer?
EDIT really my question is how. I am aware that there are 1 byte data structures in a language like c, but how could I use something like a char to store two integers?
In C or C++ you can use a struct to allocate the required number of bits to a variable as given below:
#include <stdio.h>
struct packed {
unsigned char a:4, b:4;
};
int main() {
struct packed p;
p.a = 10;
p.b = 20;
printf("p.a %d p.b %d size %ld\n", p.a, p.b, sizeof(struct packed));
return 0;
}
The output is p.a 10 p.b 4 size 1, showing that p takes only 1 byte to store, and that numbers with more than 4 bits (larger than 15) get truncated, so 20 (0x14) becomes 4. This is simpler to use than the manual bitshifting and masking used in the other answer, but it is probably not any faster.
You can store two 4-bit numbers in one byte (call it b which is an unsigned char).
Using hex is easy to see that: in b=0xAE the two numbers are A and E.
Use a mask to isolate them:
a = (b & 0xF0) >> 4
and
e = b & 0x0F
You can easily define functions to set/get both numbers in the proper portion of the byte.
Note: if the 4-bit numbers need to have a sign, things can become a tad more complicated since the sign must be extended correctly when packing/unpacking.
I'm reading binary data in character format from an accelerometer and it consists of higher byte and lower byte. It's a long time since I worked with C++ and usually only used higher level stuff.
I have the following function:
short char2short(char* hchar, char* lchar)
{
char temp[2];
temp[0] = *hchar;
temp[1] = *lchar;
How can I get that values converted to an integer?
atoi works different as far as I know (e.g. "21" = 21).
Can I just typecast char to int? But how does it work with higher bit and lower bit?
Thanks in advance for any help!
You should store the bytes as unsigned to avoid issues with shifting sign bits.
short char2short(unsigned char hchar, unsigned char lchar)
{
return static_cast<short>(lchar | (hchar << 8));
}
You may also want to use unsigned short. It depends what you expect.